Thursday, August 02, 2012

Déjà Vu at Senate Climate Hearing - ScienceInsider
Boxer immediately challenged Sessions’s analysis. The vast majority of climate researchers disagreed with Sessions’s views, she noted, adding that there were also "probably 1% to 2% of scientists who don’t believe that lung cancer is associated with smoking." Sessions, clearly irate, responded that he wasn’t “talking about the scientists” but the quality of the data. Boxer responded: "You shouldn't be offended by that," she reassured him, since "the conclusion you are coming to is shared by 1% to 2% of scientists," drawing audible laughter from some onlookers in an overflow viewing room.
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What Christy didn't get to discuss was his proposed solution to that perceived problem, which he outlined in his written testimony. He calls on Congress to take 5% to 10% of the funds that the United States gives to IPCC (which have averaged about $3 million annually over the last decade) and dedicate it to "a group of well-credentialed scientists to produce an assessment that expresses legitimate, alternative hypotheses that have been (in their view) marginalized, misrepresented or ignored in previous IPCC reports (and thus EPA and National Climate Assessments). Such activities are often called 'Red Team' reports and are widely used in government and industry." Red teams, he writes, could provide "a parallel, scientifically-based assessment regarding the state of climate science which addresses issues which here-to-for [sic] have been un- or under-represented."
Senators fiddle while nation burns | Grist
It’s been three years since the U.S. Senate talked about the climate...Three years in which every single one of us got three years closer to the parched, scorched, desolate future we’re barreling towards.

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